Time Bandit

Epilogue - In a Timely Manner

King Cold ended up arriving a few months after Mirai Trunks and Yamcha left. He brought both his sons, all of their armies, and a chip on his shoulder to rival Vegeta's. It was an all-out declaration of war, and they arrived prepared not simply to conquer, but to make an example of FX-50 and all others who dared to defy the Cold Empire.

It probably would have worked out better if the group waiting for them hadn't had close to a year to prepare for them. Or if they had taken the motley group of fighters waiting for them when they touched down a bit more seriously – it never ends well for people who don't give motley groups of fighters due respect, it really doesn't.

As it was, King Cold emerged from his ship already in his second form, and Goku called dibs pretty much instantly. And years later, though he had many more adventures, and faced many more foes before he died, he would still definitively list the fight against Cold as one of his top ten most enjoyable.

18 fought Cooler with Piccolo. Or possibly Cooler and Piccolo. It was kind of hard to tell what was going on from the outside, and neither of them were willing to comment afterwards. The icejin was definitely crying at one point, though, that was very clear on the film.

The fact that there is a film of the fight is also why 18 didn't team up with 17 as had been previously planned, since her twin decided, last minute, to make a home video of the battle instead of, you know, fighting. He got his Krillin privileges revoked again for that one though, to be fair, it's a pretty good film. Gohan likes the part where his mom punched a soldier so hard they blew up. Goku wants her to teach him how to do that.

Gohan, for his part, didn't actually fight – he stayed home and babysat Goten and Bra, chatted with 16, and worked on his ki-sensing and meditation, because everyone decided that taking the nine-year-old to battle was probably not for the best.

Back to Chichi, the group in general was impressed at how well she fought, considering she had been retired from fighting previously and they hadn't known she'd started again. She was a welcome addition to the ranks, however, and, along with Lunch, Krillin, Tien, and Raditz, decimated the three armies the icejin had brought with them. Lunch caused no less than three existential crises using her 'One Becomes Two' technique on unsuspecting aliens and caused general confusion in whatever portion of the battle field she was in. Krillin spin-kicked a spaceship back into orbit. Three times. With the same ship. The occupants were very pissed and very motion-sick by the time they managed to land. Tien pulled out a few very effective moves he hadn't really used since his assassin days, and which he later made 17 remove from the film.

But not before Vegeta saw them. The saiyan prince was deeply impressed, to the point that Tien is now one of the few people that he has categorized as 'worth talking to.' It should be noted that Raditz still hasn't managed to make it into this category.

Speaking of whom, Raditz ran into some people he'd known in his Planet Trade days during the battle and had an absolutely wonderful time beating the shit out of them. Then he ran into some more people he knew and actually liked, and they all went and hid behind some rocks and reminisced until some of the Z Warriors yelled at him to get his tail back in the fight, though Raditz's friends refrained from rejoining the battle and are currently adapting quite well to life on Earth.

Vegeta, meanwhile, finally got to beat up Frieza. He found it a deeply cathartic experience, not to mention a damn satisfying one, and is somewhat less grumpy these days as a result (just don't mention the fact that Goku did it first to him).

While all this was going on, Bulma snuck onto Cold's ship with Chiaotzu (who, speaking of 'cold,' was a stone cold badass, whipped every guard they came across, and generally ensured Bulma had the time and safety to do her work). The self-proclaimed beautiful genius, for her part, found a computer console, cracked her knuckles, and started hacking. It was much easier to do now that she was familiar with the operating system, the keyboard, and the language, and she erased Earth from every known galactic database she could find, then, carefully and concisely, found her way into the main servers and back-up servers for the Planet Trade's data bases and erased them as well before dropping a spike into their finances, resulting in there not being much of a Planet Trade left for any battle survivors to return to, at least in regards to paperwork and money. After all, the Z Warriors were not the only ones that had been preparing, and the Colds weren't the only ones who knew how to run (or, in this case, ruin) a business empire. The brief period of time left between this act of corporate sabotage and the end of the battle was spent capsulizing as much tech as possible for later study in the event none of the ships survived the battle (a possibility Bulma counted as all too likely after her hair-raising experiences on Namek).

She needn't have worried, though – two vessels that were left behind did end up being mostly intact (not the ones Krillin had kicked, though), and Bulma claimed them as right of salvage for Capsule Corp. The others allowed this, mostly because none of them had any pressing need for a spaceship at that time. The Planet Trade members who survived the battle flew off shakily, already coming up with explanations as to what had happened and reasons to never return to that thrice-cursed planet (none of which had much at all to do with the truth, because the truth was embarrassing). It turned out that the explanations weren't necessary when they got back due to the chaos Bulma had strewn, but they didn't know that at the time.

The Z Warriors, of course, had a celebration over their victory and the fact that everyone actually managed to come out of the fight alive and with all their limbs attached. It was a slightly subdued party, because everyone was tired (big day and all), but it was fun. Lunch swapped stories of awesome with Chiaotzu while Lunch snuggled with Tien, Gohan took the opportunity to assuage some of his curiosity about Piccolo and ask him a million questions about the fight, and the brat was less obnoxious than Piccolo had always assumed he would be, so he allowed it. But just this once. (Spoilers: it will end up being more than once).

Raditz introduced his space friends to everyone, and a good portion of the evening was spent imparting some of the more important rules about living on Earth to them (no killing, be careful humans break easy, the kid with long hair is Goku's you have been warned), Krillin and 18 cuddled while 17 showed them his video footage, Goku gave Chichi the last pork bun, and the two youngest demi-saiyans had a nap in the corner.

Vegeta and Bulma were both extremely pleased with themselves and at least mildly impressed with each other, and as a result managed to scrounge up enough reserves for an enjoyably energetic night in the bedroom once the party dispersed.

And, approximately nine months later, the Briefs family got another new addition – a little boy with lavender hair and a fuzzy bump of a tail, who was born exactly when he was supposed to be.

The End

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A careful examination of this fic's timeline will reveal that, yes, yes I did calculate everything so that Trunks would be born the same time he was during the canon timelines. He wasn't born late – Bra was born early. ;)

And that's it for Time Bandit – I didn't want to leave you all entirely hanging as to what happened for the fight with the Colds, so I hope you found this an enjoyable synopsis and, indeed, an enjoyable story overall! ^U^